The Joseph Stack Suicide Attack on an Austin IRS Location
I really didn't want to draw attention to Thursday's kamikaze attack by Austin area software engineer Joe Stack, whom had earlier set his house on fire (around 9:15AM). (I have seen one report claiming Stack's wife and daughter escaped the burning house, but a neighbor claimed that they drove to the scene.) I don't like rubberneckers while I'm driving, and I do realize there's a segment of the population attracted to hockey fights and spectacular auto racing crashes. Among other things, I always worry about a rash of mentally unbalanced people looking for their 15 minutes of fame and doing copycat incidents; I think the best practical way to deal with these situations is not to give these people the notoriety they seek. I think in many cases, sports coverage has handled this better, refusing to show the occasional flasher at a public event or some well-endowed stripper running onto the field to kiss a particular athlete.
I didn't even want to read Stack's web-published rant; but I realized that many progressives and the liberal mass media would focus on the anti-IRS thread and try to connect this event to the Tea Party movement. I am not a member of the Tea Party movement, although I'm sympathetic to the fiscally conservative critique. I think, perhaps of my experiences in having to fight office politics and the bureaucracy for change and/or simply doing the right thing in my careers as a university professor and an information technology professional, I'm more of a realist.
[I've mentioned some personal examples in past posts; it is beyond the scope of this post to go into details, but for example, at UWM I found myself attacked for pursuing an academic dishonesty case against a group of Asian students, and I found a senior professor, responding to my PRIVATE criticisms of his student's dissertation proposal scheduled to be defended, explicitly reminding me as a junior faculty member that I had no vote in my own tenure process. And students reacted strongly against our decision to expand requirements of an MIS major degree from 9 to 18 academic hours, although we had determined the status quo was undermining the marketability of our students with employers. I could cite literally hundreds of times in my own career where I found myself attacked, including threats of termination, for doing my job, with no hidden agenda. So when it comes to officeholders and unrealistic expectations of what any one politician can do, I tend to be less judgmental. At the same time, I've always been an overachiever...]
I think what I'm most concerned about in terms of the Tea Party movement is exactly what happened in last year's NY-23 special election. Scozzafava had withdrawn but still pulled in over 5% of the vote, allowing Democrat Bill Owens to win with 48.3% of the vote. Owens then went on to support the Democratic Party Health Care bill, the last thing the Tea Party movement wanted. The lesson to the Tea Party movement (and Republicans) is clear: work within the two-party system.
It's easy to be against something; after all, Democrats were against George W. Bush for almost the entire period he was in office. It's tougher to be constructive, and that's the issue I find with most of the Tea Party folks. It's one thing to realize what adding a new government bureaucracy for health care means; the fact is, we need to deal with the issue of catastrophic health costs; we have to deal with people with health conditions essentially priced out of the market (assuming they can find coverage) and small businesses which lack pricing power and other advantages (e.g., not subject to certain costly state mandates) of big businesses. I believe there are ways to get there without federal involvement, e.g., working through new and existing state high risk pools. Most of the things I've heard from the Tea Party movement (including their list of issues) are fairly qualitative in nature, say, for instance, private school competition; anecdotal evidence is encouraging, but are results scalable? We can talk about simplified tax systems, but what about government financing mechanisms based on exemptions? As a problem solver, I go beyond bumper sticker solutions.
Most conservatives, including myself, do believe in maintaining low tax rates in pursuit of the lower spending objective. In part, this provides an automatic ceiling on progressive government empire building. (How well is that working for us given a $1.42T deficit last year--and that's without cap-and-trade and health care reform...--never mind unfunded mandates?)
Now, given the current tax-and-spend environment, it's natural that the liberal mass media would want to find a link between an anti-IRS rant and the Tea Party movement. However, by all accounts, Joe Stack was not politically active; he seemed like a normal nice guy to friends and relatives and didn't seem to be obsessed with political issues. In a manner of speaking, this reminds me a little about the late pro wrestler Chris Benoit, who was quiet, well-liked and respected by fellow wrestlers and a devoted family man, but ended up murdering his wife and beloved young son before committing suicide, There were some odd details reported towards the end, e.g., he felt he was being followed on his way home from airports, and he sent out Biblical quote text messages that weekend, and one or more Bibles were found near death scenes by investigators. I am not a psychologist, but my personal feeling is both men had some form of undiagnosed mental illness. At some point, they simply "snapped".
I think the fact that this guy was a software engineer was interesting; I myself have done some occasional independent contracting. I have seen some very talented people lose it under stress. A couple of years back I was subcontracting at the headquarters of a well-known management consulting firm on an internal data warehousing project. The lead developer (another subcontractor) was making some changes to the interfaces of his programs, which didn't work properly. He immediately jumped to the paranoid conclusion I had stripped his database account of necessary privileges; this was not based on any Oracle error message but simply the fact his new code didn't work, and he refused to let me look at his code. (Two weeks earlier project management made the decision to have him go home for the remaining 2 days of the week; I don't know the specifics, but he had this glassy-eyed disoriented look.) He attempted to get a client DBA to document his baseless allegation and when I went to talk to him, he physically threatened me. (I left the project thereafter, because the client refused to address his behavior: the project was already behind schedule, and they couldn't or wouldn't replace him.)
I have met other unusual IT characters during my assignments over the years. There was a senior DBA at one of my first jobs whom had refused to take a vacation in 5 years--because the last time he had gone on vacation, he came back to find a mess that took weeks to resolve. He was a control freak but unable to cope with the company's organic 30% growth. A second senior DBA had resigned after being assigned a junior DBA; I booked the assignment to replace him until they could hire a permanent senior DBA. He was absolutely petrified at the thought the junior trainee DBA would do something wrong with her privileges and that he would be held responsible for it. In a third case, a project DBA had not been able to fly home over the weekend and showed up Monday, wearing the same shirt over the weekend; he lifted his arms, pointed to the visible armpit sweat stains, and kept repeating "Stinky! Stinky! Stinky!" until one of our female functional contractors told him to knock it off.
I had already heard from the media that Joe Stack had published a long, rambling rant, playing himself as the victim of some government conspiracy; I have zero tolerance for victimization theory, but when news reports indicated his rant included the Catholic Church, I was curious how the Catholic Church entered the picture of his beef with the IRS. It turns out he saw the "wealthy" Church as a giant tax dodge that his taxes were having to subsidize. I mostly scanned through the rest of it; he had encountered problems in California, moved to Austin and could only find gigs at a third of what he could earn in California, which he attributed to a supplier conspiracy. He was particularly incensed about some 1986 federal tax clause which he saw as discriminating against independent contractors. And, of course, he sees politicians in an unholy alliance with Big Business, feathering their own nest. He closes his statement with a populist rant against capitalism.
I know lots of people have issues with the IRS. There have been people whom have gone to jail over problems with the IRS, and none of them have resorted to this type of violence. However we may feel about the IRS and tax laws, the professionals in the Austin office had nothing to do with tax policy. You change tax policy through the Congress. I've discussed in a prior post my beef with the California franchise tax board; they disallowed a credit for excess SDI deductions (I had maxed out under my first employer, but they "lost" my subsequent W-2's, my W-2 copy was probably in some moving box, and my second employer had gone out of business), and they charged me over $1500 in taxes for an installment of a (still underwater) Roth IRA conversion I had made in Illinois, with no intention of moving to California and including no California income; in the bizarre world of California jurisprudence, they thought it was fair to charge people coming from states that didn't tax Roth IRA conversion amounts, because they didn't similarly chase California residents moving out of state. I had moved back to Illinois, but California was extorting me. I finally paid off the state racketeers because it wasn't worth my time and effort to fight it. Angry over the injustice? Of course. But never to the point of seeking revenge. Over the past 9 years, I have routinely refused to consider any California-based opportunity, even when I've been between assignments; the state will never see another nickel in taxes from me. And that's not even taking into account the absurd hole California progressives have dug the state into, with certain public employees able to retire at up to 90% of base salary by the age of 50 and lucrative state benefits. Are you kidding me?
No, Joe Stack; violence is never the answer. You made your wife a widow and left your family homeless. You took the lives of innocent people. You are not a victim; you created victims. Your selfish act didn't change a line of IRS code. You should have gone to a psychologist to deal with your issues; it is not normal to fly airplanes into buildings. You were a citizen, one of a relatively small number of people privileged to have been born in the world's greatest democracy, able to create your own company. There are people whom would give everything they own to have the opportunity you had. You threw it all away.
Tiger Woods' Statement
I have only made passing reference to the notorious issues involving the world's greatest golfer, Tiger Woods, the son of an African American man and a Thai woman, originating with a bizarre early morning auto accident, driving away his residence and crashing into a fire hydrant and a tree. Almost immediately rumors started circulating over a marital dispute between Tiger and his Swedish wife Elin, over evidence of his extramarital affairs, and it seemed nearly every day a new mistress was surfacing.
Tiger Woods, someone who has zealously guarded his private life and had a squeaky clean public image which, along with his astounding golf income, has attracted tens of millions of dollars in lucrative product and service endorsements. Why would he put that in danger with extramarital affairs, a tabloid story just waiting to be written with any of a number of lovers? For the same reason Bill Clinton had an affair with a young female subordinate while in the Oval Office: he thought he could get away with it. When the story broke out of control, Tiger saw his carefully nurtured role model image shattered like Humpty Dumpty. He suspended his golf tour and some suggest that he has visited clinics for treatment to a sexual addiction.
Now as a Christian, I believe in the sanctity of marriage, and adultery is morally unacceptable. Generally speaking, I'm not interested in the private sex lives of teachers or public figures, unless they involve things like statutory rape of a student, sexual harassment of a subordinate, or a compromising situation with an attractive Russian spy. I think he should be judged primarily by his professionalism and quality of play on the golf course. I do realize a number of women are attracted to celebrity males, and heavy travel schedules of professional athletes provide many opportunities for casual encounters; basketball great Wilt Chamberlain once claimed to have had sex with thousands of women.
What I like about Tiger Woods' stepping forward to deliver his speech yesterday is the fact that, unlike most people in his situation, he's not making excuses, rationalizing his behavior by pointing at other public figures, blaming his parents, his family, his circumstances, etc. He's acknowledging his responsibility and is atoning for his behavior. Tiger's statement is powerful, and I hope that others, particularly politicians caught up in sex scandals (e.g., Governors Sanford, Spitzer, and McGreevey), will learn from how Woods handled himself today. I've reorganized salient insights in the following extract:
I want to say to each of you, simply and directly, I am deeply sorry for my irresponsible and selfish behavior I engaged in. Elin and I have started the process of discussing the damage caused by my behavior. As Elin pointed out to me, my real apology to her will not come in the form of words. It will come from my behavior over time. The issue involved here was my repeated irresponsible behavior. I was unfaithful. I had affairs, I cheated. What I did is not acceptable. And I am the only person to blame. My failures have made me look at myself in a way I never wanted to before. It's now up to me to make amends, and that starts by never repeating the mistakes I've made. It's up to me to start living a life of integrity. I recognize I have brought this on myself, and I know, above all, I am the one who needs to change. I owe it to those closest to me to become a better man.
Quote of the Day
If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough - Mario Andretti
Political Cartoon
RJ Matson points out that that retiring Senator Bayh, who claims the increasingly polarized partisan divide in Congress has disillusioned him, further shrinks the pool of more centrist Democrats. Personally, I think Bayh is insincere; after all, he voted against Bush's strongly qualified nominees to the Supreme Court (Justices Roberts and Alito) and he was not a member of the bipartisan Gang of 14 which defused a crisis over Democrats' unprecedented, systematic use of the filibuster to prevent floor votes on nominees. Bayh has been a reliable supporter of Obama's progressive agenda and has a lifetime ACU rating of about 20% (although that somewhat reflects he's turning to the left in his later withdrawn candidacy for the 2008 Democratic nomination for President). I think Bayh sensed this reelection campaign would be tough this year with an angry electorate, and a loss could have ended his political career; is it merely a coincidence following the entry of his predecessor (Dan Coats) into the race a few days earlier? (Dan Coats won over 60% of the Indiana vote in his last race before he retired in 1998.)
Elton John, "The Last Song"
Mark Schultz, "He's My Son" (the story behind the song)
(Schultz' song is used as background to this father's video on his infant son's health issues)
Cat Stevens, "Father and Son"
Mike & the Mechanics, "The Living Years"
